skyline

Hamilton is rebranding — and not as a bedroom community

Hey Toronto: Hamilton wants to be your business partner, not your bedroom community.

May 13, 2013

The sensitive topic came up repeatedly on the first day of the cheekily named Hamilton Consulate event on Queen Street West, which is using panel discussions, music, fashion showcases and even business-oriented speed dating to “rebrand” the city in the eyes of Toronto investors.

The city’s white-hot real estate market was a popular talking point — particularly a local realtor’s study that suggests priced-out Toronto residents were responsible for a quarter of Hamilton home sales in the first three months of the year.

But well-known GTA developer Brad Lamb, an event panellist who has pitched a 600-unit, two-tower condo project on the former CHCH property, found himself clarifying quotes attributed to him in a Toronto magazine declaring Hamilton is destined to become a “suburb to Toronto.”

The self-proclaimed Toronto condo king told concerned Hamilton boosters he was taken out of context.

August 14, 2007

“I would never call Hamilton a bedroom community. I don’t develop in bedroom communities … I like Hamilton because it’s a city,” said Lamb, who added he is considering four possible Hamilton condo and rental projects in the downtown worth more than $1 billion, including at least one 300-unit tower on Main Street.

(He said his other contentious quote about a “dying city” was meant to refer to Hamilton as a past industrial powerhouse.)

Lamb, nonetheless, maintains newcomers to Hamilton who continue to work in Toronto will be “part of the recipe of success” for the growing city. That continued population growth — he sees Hamilton topping a million people faster than provincial projections — is also critical for economic development, he argued.

“Intercity migration is going to take place. Some of those people are going to have great jobs in Toronto and they’re going to keep those jobs … I think that is a viable lifestyle, especially with the GO train,” he said.

City planning head Jason Thorne said there’s no doubt there will be “more fluidity between where people live and work in future.”

But he argued Hamilton is “in no danger” of becoming a suburb of Toronto. He said past studies show only a “pretty small fraction” of local commuters actually travel outside the Hamilton-Burlington area. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)

BURNING DESIRE TO WATCH

Everyone’s an armchair fire chief. As the plastic recycling plant burned to a shell, heaving an Apocalyptic cloud of smoke skyward, it seemed half of Hamilton gathered Wednesday night to gawk — and offer their firefighting expertise to anyone within earshot.

Hamilton Spectator photo

“What nimrod would put a hose right there? The smoke’s coming from over there, ” said one man, pointing agitatedly to where he felt Hamilton’s smoke-eaters should be paying attention.

“Why aren’t there any hoses along that wall? They should be hosing down the walls near that smokestack, ” said another, as he settled into a comfy patch of grass off of Ferguson Avenue North with his family.

But along with the complainers came an enthusiastic crowd of onlookers who were treated to one of the biggest and most spectacular fires in the city’s history as free entertainment.

Children played, families sat on blankets, others brought coolers and lawn chairs to sit and watch along the railway tracks and grassy knolls around the Wellington Street North Plastimet Inc. plant.

It seemed more like Victoria Day fireworks than a fire disaster.

People Ooooooh’ed and Ahhhhh’ed when walls started to collapse, or when the thick smoke coming from the fire scene temporarily changed from black to light grey and then back to black.

Area residents spilled on to their porches and tugged on beer and cola.

An enterprising ice cream vendor peddled into the area.

Dogs caught Frisbees. People laughed. Some children cried.

Driving was a nightmare as rubberneckers spent more time gazing at the plume of smoke than on the road, and the streets and sidewalks were jammed by people following the towering inferno to find the source of the fire.

A threesome of young pedestrians, picking their way along Barton Street towards the fire, were excitedly guessing the cause of the blaze.

“Maybe it’s a bomb! Or a plane crash!” offered one.

“Maybe the Mars probe crashed!” enthused another.

And with officials keeping mum on what might have sparked the fire causing all this commotion — who can argue with the Mars probe theory?